


To See for Oneself

by Maidenjedi



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-17
Updated: 2013-09-17
Packaged: 2017-12-26 20:37:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/970045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maidenjedi/pseuds/Maidenjedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scully, trying to mourn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To See for Oneself

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal in June 2009. Alludes to my old story "Bleeding Kansas" but that isn't required to understand this at all. Also, this veers off from canon. Safe to say, no spoilers beyond "This is Not Happening."

The skin was ashen, putty-like in appearance and marked with unexplainable holes that went no deeper than a human fingernail could go. She wrote these details down and spoke into her recorder to back it up.

The flesh elsewhere clung loosely. He had lost weight, a drastic amount in a short time.

She cut into his chest with curiosity, fascination. What might she find that would prove he was not who they all thought?

Old wounds, gunshots (this one here was hers). Fragments, in one place, of a shell that had not been cleaned out of a wound once. 

She measured his heart and found it compared to those of males of similar height, weight, and build.

His last meal...he'd evidently not had one.

She took stock of him and tried to determine what had done this. What had killed them both, that night.

There was no answer.

And that was the cruelest blow of all.

\----

"Ashes to ashes..."

She hates funerals.

She always had. Dead bodies in boxes in the dirt, dead bodies that will be crushed under that weight, dead bodies that will not fight but will accept it all, taking the dirt as a matter of course and mingling with it.

The body will fade. 

"...dust to dust."

In med school, she'd discovered her scalpel could revive the dead, keep them interesting, for hours, maybe days. She could find stories in dead tissue, wondrous tales in hearts that no longer beat. Autopsies gave the dead a few more days of glory, let them linger just a while longer above the ground, away from the worms.

But funerals. 

The final nail in the coffin was the book's cover closing. And the book being thrown, violently, across the room and into the fire. Dirt landing, shovelful by mournful shovelful, more like flames leaping to consume and to claim.

There were words that meant nothing, just platitudes and attempts to stifle the real grief of every person there. Conducting a funeral, she thought, must be a lot like reading the Bible to native heathens who don't even speak your tongue. They are anxious to get on with their own rites and rituals, and you speak nonsense at them about eternity and comfort. They know only the crushing dirt, the way flesh smells when consumed by flame, and the emptiness of their hearts. What can you offer them, when you can't understand how they feel?

He closed with a verse from Revelation, a few amens come from the crowd (in the back, she thought, people who don't actually know him, are here for the spectacle). She shuddered as the wind gusted and spat raindrops on her cheek. 

It always rains at funerals.

There were last gasps for air before the mournful wailing began, the realization of finality settling over the stupefied and frozen crowd. The funeral was at a close. Shuffling feet passed, there were pats on her arm and kisses on her cheeks, her forehead, her hands. One or two crushing hugs, to which she clung, wanting to feel suffocation and smothering. 

Offers to drive her home, offers to take her to her mother's, offers to stay with her at the graveside. She rejected them all. Politely. Why she needed to be polite when she felt like screaming, fighting them all was beyond her. But she was polite and they were kind. She told them no, thank you, and they gave her watery smiles that seem to wish to convey "it will be alright."

When they were all gone, even Frohike in his sad faded suit, she said to the grave:

"It won't be alright at all."

\----

She stayed too long at the cemetery. So long that the caretakers sent to fill in the grave had to ask her if she was okay, could they call someone. "I'm fine."

Mulder, I'm fine.

But she was lightheaded and nauseous, the baby demanding nourishment even if she didn't want to provide it, and so she left. 

She drove in no particular direction for the better part of an hour, feeling somewhat refreshed by simply sitting and letting the pressure off her feet. She wasn't all that far along and already her feet were rejecting high heels.

At her apartment, she traded the shoes out for sneakers, grabbed an orange, and left again. She went to his instead, the habit of sleeping on his couch not readily relinquished despite Agent Doggett's meddling. She sobbed into the Navajo blanket and blocked out every practical thought, every inquiry of her own into what her life would be like without him.

There was nothing left to do, nothing but find a way to move on. 

A laugh escaped her. With an unborn child, a career shot to hell, and no one left to lean on? Move on to what?

There was always the assignment in Utah.

\---

"I can get you a transfer, if that's what you want. Are you sure you want to leave the area, though, Agent Scully?"

Protocol, of course, did not let him keep calling her "Dana." And she would not call him Walter.

"If there is something close, I'll take it. I didn't think there would be, with the cuts...."

"Only cuts on new agents being moved into high-profile divisions. The brass figure it would be better for public relations...you know how it goes."

"Yes."

He shifted in his seat, evidently recalling the many meetings - shouting matches, really - in this room about the image of the Bureau and how it did not gel with Mulder's mission.

"Field work is probably out of the question."

"Yes."

"You taught at Quantico before your transfer, is that right?"

"Yes, and a couple of times since." When they'd shut Mulder down, and her with him.

"Let's see what we can do."

\---

She cried in elevators, on staircases. Because he was not beside her there, hand on her back or later, in her hair. In hallways, when she smelled his cologne. At the grocery store once, passing by his brand of toothpaste. In the car, when her feet couldn't reach the pedals.

Once she cried for a straight hour on the Mall, on the bench where they used to meet when they weren't working in the same office, or the same division. She could see the place where they had stood and she'd taken his hand to remind him, he wasn't alone.

And then she remembered, they were both alone now.

She cried when her cell phone rang and it wasn't him. When the doctor asked her if the father could come for the next appointment, because there would be pictures! 

She cried when her mother asked, "Is it Fox's baby?" and she did not answer the question.

She cried because, how could she be totally sure?

And then because she was.

\---

 

Missy's grave was set apart, under a cherry tree in what could almost be a lonely field, except the Washington skyline marred the view. It was a family plot that hadn't been used; Bill Scully, Sr. had changed his will to request cremation and sprinkling. 

Scully could recall her father's face and his voice more readily than Melissa's. That was a sad fact, and a fantastic leap made her believe it was because Melissa was rooted here, part of the soil. The Captain was part of the very air.

She came here, often as she could, to get her head clear. Today she wanted it muddled, confused, full of her sister's ramblings and preternatural theories and glorious beliefs. 

In the spring, there would be blossoms on the tree. Scully preferred coming then, thought she wasn't about to quit coming just because the blossoms had faded.

"I wish you were here." She didn't often admit that. "I don't know what I'm doing. Or who I really am, without him. I need you here to tell me that this is okay. I think they all look at me like I should get over it, I should move on, Mulder wouldn't want me to fade away without him. And I don't know that he's gone, Missy. I don't know and I need you."

The wind shook Melissa's tree, whistled softly. That was no answer, but she could stand up and think that maybe an answer was coming.

She went home and slept in his shirt. It was starting to push out at the stomach.

The closest he would ever get to her again.

\---

 

"What if it's a girl?"

"Mom...."

"I'm just saying, Dana. Little girls can't wear blue onesies with trains on them."

"Who says?"

Maggie sighed deeply and rolled her eyes, and put the pink onesie with the flowers down on the counter with the blue one. "Just in case."

She had not asked for the sex of the baby, and her mother was driving her to distraction to find out. Really, she wasn't totally sure she wanted to know anything about this baby. What if everything was wrong, what if it was a nightmare?

The books said this was normal, this fear. She wasn't so sure the authors of the books had ever encountered babies with tails or alien offspring before.

"What about the shower? What are you going to register for? You have to find out, Dana, it's only fair to your guests."

She bit her tongue to keep from retorting that she did not really care, since the guests weren't going to be friends of hers but of Maggie's. The entire shower business wore on her and it was months away yet.

She'd always preferred wedding showers, truth be told. More fun for everyone, especially the guest of honor. And no diaper-related games.

"I'll find out when I find out, Mom. When the baby is born. Like it was when you had us kids."

Maggie made a face that says plainly that she would have given anything to know if she were going to have a William Jr or a little Maggie, but did not press the argument further.

\----

Bill did not call for a month after the funeral.

Scully didn't think much of it. He traveled because of the Navy, and saved time by calling his wife only, and letting her spread whatever good or bad news there was to tell. And he hadn't liked Mulder, so she figured he wouldn't know what to say anyway.

Though he had come. He had stood not far from a weeping Maggie, and he was respectful. Said "amen" in the proper places and didn't bother complaining that it wasn't a Catholic service. All of which was unlike him.

She ruled him as unpredictable for the first time in his life.

When he did call, the connection was feeble and his time was short, but he had to tell her something, he had to say something to her that couldn't wait.

"I'm sorry."

In all his life, Bill Scully, Jr. had never apologized to anyone who wasn't his mother or his wife. He was as stubborn as his sister, really. They'd fought like cats as children and had not changed.

"For what?" She honestly didn't know.

"Not trusting him. Not trusting you."

Tears that had nothing to do with grief slipped down her cheeks.

 

\----

Taking off her high heels for the last time was a bit of a relief.

Until she heard Mulder's voice, asking her to wear them, that one time when she had taken off her clothes slowly, while he watched.

She sobbed as she slipped her feet back into them, just this once, before her feet were too swollen to take it at all.

 

\----

She taught her classes, attempted to ignore Agent Doggett's occasional plea for help to little effect, and went through the motions of being pregnant. It was almost as though that part was happening to someone else.

Until the first time she felt an honest-to-God kick. 

She smiled, a real smile that hadn't appeared since before he went missing. But it collapsed into tears, great sobs that consumed her and left her raw and shaking.

Because he missed it. He wasn't there.

And she was alone.

 

\---

The nightmares were bad, and increased in frequency as the pregnancy progressed. Of course it was normal hormones, and had nothing to do with waking up to an empty, cold bed. Oh, no, of course not.

Most of the dreams were recurring. Mulder, in the field, crying out to her in words she could not hear, pleading for help in a silent voice. Emily, not in her casket, a pile of dust to greet the woman who was not mother. Missy, tubes in her face, crying out Dana's fault, Dana's the one, she did this to me! 

Bill, at the birth, shaking his head. "One sorry son of a bitch."

But the worst of the dreams came only once. She was five months pregnant, almost three months without Mulder.

A prairie. Wind blowing hard, stopped by nothing on the endless expanse. The smell of smoke, of burning wood, a house lit by licking flames just beyond a corn field. 

A boy lying on the grass beside her, choking from smoke inhaled while he was still in the house. How did he get out? A woman, a familiar woman, blond hair and cool blue gaze, kneeling beside him.

The scene changes and they are in a car, being chased by a black SUV, and the boy is screaming. "William, look for the exit!"

"Marita, they have guns!"

Scully tries to cry out but finds she is without voice.

The final scene, set at night, in a truck bed. William, the boy, snatched by dark hands unseen by Marita. The dream closes with the click of an ice pick. The weapon used to kill extraterrestrials.

She wakes in a sweat. The boy had looked like Mulder. The woman...she knew Marita mostly by sight. What was this dream? 

Premonition, whispered her recently opened mind. A vision.

She didn't sleep for two nights.

\----

 

Mulder's headstone was put in during the sixth month.

She didn't like it, was certain he would object to the line about "beloved son" and she thought anything with his given names on it was weird. It made it seem less like he had actually died, because she did not know "Fox William Mulder." That name was too full, too enigmatic. Nothing like Mulder was, complicated but no mystery at all. A funny name, but just a name after all.

She'd not totally given up on the idea that he wasn't actually dead. Her autopsy had done much to convince her scientifically, rationally. Dana Scully was all about rational, after all. 

But Fox Mulder wasn't, and that thought kept her awake some nights. It kept her going most days. He could be alive. They might have faked his death, given her a corpse laced with his DNA, made to look like him. He'd been wasted and pockmarked anyway and "exposure" wasn't a cause of death that satisfied Scully's inquisitive and hungry mind. It was a textbook answer, an answer given when the coroner was too lazy to dig deeper. Or too scared.

So many things might have killed him - alien virus, exploratory surgeries that amounted to torture, experimentation with vaccines and cures and killer poisons. She knew, too, that it was possible nothing had killed him at all, that he roamed and searched and cried out for her, only her doubt, her nagging doubt drowned out his voice.

What if she had been wrong? What if she had not looked hard enough?

That was her fear, and she confronted it while teaching.

"Might we not finally look to the supernatural? The incredible? The fantastic?" She asked her class this question. The quizzical looks she got back told her, they were not ready to think this far outside the realm of accepted science. They would need to keep looking for rational, explainable reasons for death.

Their scalpels were poised like hers, ready to keep the story going rather than let it stop a few pages short of the ending. They did have that in common. 

She whispered to his grave, superstitious that doing so was admitting he was dead once and for all, that she knew he could show them a thing or two.

He might yet, after all.

\----

 

Fox Mulder's story was not over. 

It continued with cries, screams, pleas for drugs, hand-grasping and teeth-clenching, "push, Dana, push!," and a final cry and sighs of relief from all.

Years from now, the grave grown over from neglect and Scully worn out from the same, Mulder could return, and the dream of prairie wind, fire, and a boy named William might not come true after all.

But for now, the boy named William for his grandfathers was swaddled and had no written future, and his father was wandering the skies in search of great mysteries. It was a good story, thought Scully. The only story, really, that Mulder had ever had.

\----

 

In a field, at night. She runs. She knows.

He is here.

She almost trips over his body, rushing so furiously to find him that she almost doesn't see him. Her blood rushes from her head when she sees he is not breathing.

She begs for his life.

They are not there to help. And he is not there at all.

"This is not happening!!"

The wailing of a widow is noticed, but unheeded, and decay is inevitable.


End file.
